Nolan Hester: Lightroom 3: VQS
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Nolan Hester: Lightroom 2: VQS
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Miles Hecker over at The Luminous Landscape has posted two quick pieces on why field photographers really ought to make tablet PCs part of their kit. He rightly argues that the weight difference alone between a tablet and a laptop is worth the inevitable tradeoffs in performance.
His first piece rounds up the hardware choices, though as my post title suggests, I think the iPad outshines any competitors. The second piece looks at the software side.
For now, the software choices remain limited, though the eventual release of Lightroom 4 should improve the situation as third-party developers better integrate tablet-based apps with the Lightroom workflow. One promising example is Photosmith, which is working on an all-new version of its Lightroom plug-in.
The Lightroom community initially was quite excited about Photosmith in early 2011 because it offered the prospect of being able to dump a card's worth of photos to your iPad, where you could add keywords and tags while still in the field. Once you got back to your Lightroom-equipped main computer, you'd be able to move those photos off the iPad right into a Lightroom catalog—along with the tags.
Alas, Photosmith v1 forced you to apply those tags one photo at a time, a deal-killing time suck that caused me and others to reluctantly abandon the plug-in. To their credit, Photosmith's developers have kept, um, plugging away at reconceiving and recoding the plug-in to coincide with Lightroom 4's eventual release.
When that time comes, I'll let you know how v2 fares in the field. Like plenty of other photographers, I can't wait to leave my laptop behind for good.
Adobe has released the latest updates for Lightroom (3.6) and Camera Raw (6.6). Like the release candidates of a few weeks ago, they add support for 10 cameras, including Nikon's new V1 and J1 models. About two dozen lens profiles have been added as well.
Both updates also include about a dozen minor bug fixes. Minor, that is, if they didn't affect you. For complete details, see Tom Hogarty's Lightroom Journal.
Nikon's sleek J1 and V1 models top the list of new cameras supported by the Lightroom 3.6 release candidate. Ditto for the parallel features in Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw 6.6 RC. Support also has been added for the Canon PowerShot S100, Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX1, and Samsung NX5.
Both RCs add profiles for about two dozen lens and fix a few minor bugs. For complete details, see Tom Hogarty's Lightroom Journal.
Release candidate versions have been poked and prodded by beta testers and represent the step before a final release, which generally happens about two weeks later. While RCs are betas, they're considered stable betas.
"Exposing to the right" is now common wisdom when you're setting the exposure for a digital photo. (The right being the histogram's right side where your exposure's brightest/lightest portions are displayed.) This standard advice says that your histogram should skew as far right as possible—without wiping out details in any areas except the scene's pure whites.
But it's really tough hitting that perfect exposure point where only the utterly white whites are blown out (as in this example). That's especially true in the field when making shots and checking them on the back of your camera (even using a scope). For one thing, the little histogram on the camera screen isn't nearly as accurate as the one Lightroom generates on your computer. The difficulty's compounded when you're shooting raw files since even raw-capable cameras display their previews as JPEGs.
As a former slide film shooter, I tend to play it safe by making a slightly darker exposure to make sure I don't lose highlight details. Expose-to-the-right champions contend, however, that that approach has its own problems. If your photo comes out too dark and needs to be lightened, they say, you wind up adding a lot of noise into the photo. The right-is-right crowd maintains that it's better to risk a bit of over exposure and darken the photo in post-processing since that generates less digital noise.
The Online Photographer's regular columnist Ctein has jumped right into this thicket of left and right wingers by calling expose-to-the-right "bull." In an admittedly provocative post, he goes on to call expose-to-the-right advice "dangerous" since you run the risk of losing crucial highlight details that no amount of post-processing can bring back. As for warnings about the noise generated by post-processing lightening, Ctein says such fears are overblown.
He backs up them fightin' words with some pretty convincing example photos that show how much detail can be lost by pushing exposures to the right. In the end, he suggests a method not far from my own: exposing a bit left of right. Definitely worth reading, and making some test shots of your own.
The original of this kimono and paper lantern hanging in a shop window was shot in color. Applying Lightroom's "B&W Filter-Orange Filter" preset removed the color and boosted the contrast, putting the focus on the textures and patterns.
The reds are way oversaturated, but that's what I wanted in this shot. It helps give it an unnatural look, adding to the city vs. nature feel I wanted to convey.
Shot with a polarizer, so the sky relatively dark in the camera. No gradient added to sky; just highlight recovery value of 87.
Mount Rainier National Park's Sunrise Road climbs to a 6,200' ridge where you get an incredible view of Mt. Rainier's 14,411' top. You can stand there and just watch the lenticular clouds form and reform over the peak.
This photo, btw, was posted directly from Lightroom, using Tim Armes' great export plugin LR/Blog. Very cool. At $12.60, it's a major bargain. You can see it and a bunch of other Lightroom plugins at The Photographer's Toolbox.
Adobe has updated Lightroom to version 3.5, which is available for immediate download. You'll find a mirror update for Camera Raw 6.5 there as well.
The updates add support for about 20 cameras, 26 more lens profiles, and several minor bug fixes. Added cameras include the Nikon Coolpix P7000, Olympus E-PL3, and Sony SLT-A77. The new lens profiles include four for Nikon, two for Canon, three for Sony, and 14 for Hasselblad.
It also fixes a couple of bugs: one for Mac OS 10.7 (Lion) and some tethered-shooting ones for Mac OS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). For all the details, see Tom Hogarty's note on Adobe's Lightroom Journal.
Thought that headline would catch your eye. Most times, an x.x.1 update might seem not worth bothering with. But if you're using the HP PhotoSmart R607 camera, you ought to grab this one now. Or within Lightroom 3, you can choose Help > Check for Updates; in Photoshop CS5 it's Help > Updates.
The reason: A bug introduced in the April 29 releases of Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 can corrupt photos shot with the now discontinued R607—at least in a few cases. (Adobe's May 19 alert explains the nitty-gritty.)
If that's not your camera, you can rest easy. If you're using a Canon Rebel T3i, Nikon D5100 or Fuji FinePix X100, the update includes new support for those models. For the rest of us, it's reassuring that Adobe rolled out the fix less than a week after the alert.
